Best Law Scientists

The scope of our Law research
Research.com’s best researchers ranking is a reliable account of leading scholars from the discipline of Law, created using a meticulous examination of 166,880 scholars identified from a variety of bibliometric data sources. For the field of Law, more than 1698 scholars were examined.

What is D-index acceptance threshold for Law
The D-index threshold for approving a scholar to be evaluated is established at 20 if most of their publications are in the discipline of Law. The approval requirements for researchers to be considered into the ranking of top scholars are based on the D-index, ratio of the publications made within the given discipline plus the awards and achievements of the researchers. The D-index threshold for including leading scientists is set as an increment of 10 depending on the overall number of researchers assessed for each area od study whilst making sure that the top 1% of best researchers are considered into the list. There should be a proximity of 30% or less between a researcher’s general H-index and their D-index.

Additional verification methods
Because our primary mission is to guarantee that only actual scientists are mentioned in our ranking we are aware that raw data are never meant to be a full measure to quantify the contributions of scientists. For that reason we manually inspect every profile and cross-correlate it against publications in a varied range of trustworthy sources. Even though it’s not a factor defining a researcher’s position in the ranking, the number of papers published in prominent journals and conference proceedings should form a valuable secondary indication of their contribution to research in a selected area of science. Position in the ranking is determined by each scholar’s D-index with the help of information compiled from OpenAlex and CrossRef, which are the most prominent and well-known bibliometric databases of this type open to the scientific community. A thorough explanation of our research policy can be found on our methodology page.

Our mission
Our goal is to motivate researchers, companies and decision-makers worldwide to explore where top experts are heading and to provide an opportunity for the entire scientific community to get to know who the leading experts in specific fields of research, in various countries, or even within research institutions are.
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Key findings for Law
As far as institutions are concerned, the institution with the highest number of top researchers in the world is Harvard University with 18 scientists affiliated with it being features in the Law ranking. It is followed by New York University with 16 scientists. Ranking thirds is Yale University with 16 researchers.

Prominent scholars featured in the world are associated with University of Chicago, American Bar Foundation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Northwestern University, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Louisville, London School of Economics and Political Science, Duke University, Arizona State University.

Professor Cass R. Sunstein from Harvard University is featured as the best researcher in the world in our ranking with a D-index of 114. Ranking on the second place in the world is Richard A. Posner from University of Chicago with a D-index of 98. The third position in the world is occupied by Alejandro Portes from University of Miami with a D-index of 96.

The average D-index for the top 1% researchers is 97 against an average of 30 for all scientists listed in Research.com ranking.

The average number of publications in the discipline of Law for the top 10% of researchers in the ranking is 266 in comparison to an average of 150 for all researchers.

The average number of citations for the top 10% researchers is 24748 against an average of 8304 for all researchers.